"No pals of mine. You can bet your life on that," grunted Bill. "The best thing I'd heard for a long time was when you told me about Jack Curtiss shoving that kid Rob into the river. I'd like to have seen it. If it hadn't been for those Boy Scouts, as they call themselves, Hank and Jack and I would have been East now, instead of in this God-forsaken country." "What are you kicking at?" laughed Clark. "You've done pretty well since you've been here, and if we can get that bunch of mavericks of Harkness's, we'll all have a pocketful of money." "When are you going after them?" asked Hank, placing a big bit of bacon on a hunk of bread and gnawing on it in a satisfied way that set Rob half crazy to watch. "Soon as they are turned out on the Far Pasture. When they get over the scare of the stampede, they'll leave the place unwatched, and we'll have our chance. We ought to get five hundred apiece out of it, anyhow." "That would look good to me," grunted Hank. "Oh, the scoundrels!" breathed Rob to himself. "They're plotting to steal some of Mr. Harkness's mavericks. I remember now hearing him speak of turning them out in the Far Pasture." "Then we can clear out and get back East," concluded Bill, "and take poor old Jack with us. He isn't making out very well." "Sort of hanger-on in that gambling place, isn't he?" asked Clark. "I guess that's what you'd call it." Soon after the group saddled up their ponies and prepared to leave their temporary camp. That they were on the trail, after having concluded their dastardly attempt to stampede Mr. Harkness's cattle, Rob had no doubt, judging by their conversation. "Better put that fire out!" warned Clark. "Scatter the ashes. We don't want any one trailing us." The three worthies bent together over the ashes, while their saddled ponies stood eying them at some short distance. "Guess I'd better pull back out of this before they take it into their heads to look around," thought Rob, who in his eagerness to hear what was going forward below had thrust his head out through the bush which screened him. With the object of drawing back again, he braced himself on one hand and pushed backward. How it happened he never knew, for he had been very careful, but suddenly the small rock on which the pressure of his hand rested gave way with a crash. Clawing wildly at the bush, Rob sought to save himself from being flung headlong down the hill into the camp below him, but it was too late. Down the hill he shot at lightning speed, in the midst of a roaring, rattling landslide of rocks and earth. The men in the camp started and turned as the sudden uproar of Rob's involuntary toboggan slide reached their ears. "What the----" shouted Hank Handcraft.